Defines Science

Alternatively, we might say that science is a branch of knowledge that is based upon the ability of its theories to predict outcomes, or to give reproducible results. Yet geologists, who again we would all think of as scientists, are unable to predict earthquakes or volcanic eruptions, and much less are they able to reproduce them.

Clearly, whatever science is, we are not able to define it in these simple ways. On one level, indeed, our definition is circular. In each of the above examples, we have started with a notion of science based upon some sense of what people think is, or is not, a science. We say that astronomers and geologists

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, several theoreticians proposed that the strayings of the planets could be explained by the presence of another, unknown planet out beyond them. Observers looked in the place where this hypothetical planet ought to be, and duly found it. Examining a paradigm had triumphantly led to the discovery of a new planet. Kuhn, however, added a subtle twist to his hypothesis. Paradigms gradually break down. Phenonema are discovered that cannot gracefully be fit into the governing paradigm. In the attempt to make them fit, the paradigm gradually loses its elegant simplicity, still without quite being able to explain all that needs to be explained. This was the fate of the old Ptolemaic astronomical paradigm of circular motions around a central Earth. More and more complications were added, cluttering up the system without solving the problem of planetary motions. Eventually Johannes Kepler offered a radical alternative, elliptical orbits around a central Sun, and this proved able to explain more than the old paradigm could, and do it with much greater simplicity. (Later, Newton offered a more general paradigm, which allowed Kepler's astronomy to "fit" the physics of terrestrial motions.) In recent years the term "paradigm" has
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Approximate Word count = 1764
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page)

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